Living Standards Analytics Development through the Lens of Household Survey Data

Overall, the book is highly accessible and nicely produced. The authors characterise it as ‘a gateway book’, and I think that, for researchers in policy analysis and household survey work who learnt their trade some time ago, this is an apt description: The book provides an excellent introduction to some of the more recent developments. I shall certainly recommend it to colleagues in the public policy domain...It includes traditional staples such as linear regression and sampling, but also more recent and advanced tools such as the use of directed acyclic graphs in modelling causality, Kohonen networks to group data, Bayesian approaches, propensity score matching, and survival models. It also places considerable emphasis on the power of modern graphical methods – with the consequence that the book has some very attractive colour diagrams, such as bubble plots and cartograms, which certainly demonstrate the power of modern tools.

International Statistical Review, 81, 2, Review by David J. Hand